King Karl

Think Karl Rove screwed up with Social Security? Think again. Here's an excellent article on Rove's grand strategy. (No, not the one to dominate all life; the other one.) Key paragraph:

Yet as ugly as the Social Security debate has been for Bush and the GOP, it has served—perhaps intentionally—one salutary purpose: distracting Democrats while Republicans legislate, with ungodly brio, the rest of their agenda. Class-action reform, the bankruptcy bill, drilling for oil in the Alaskan wilderness: Republicans are teeing up pet legislation and knocking it down the fairway like Tiger Woods with a brisk wind at his back. "Without Social Security," Grover Norquist, a Rove confidant and head of Americans for Tax Reform, told me, "this other stuff would've been the front line of battle. Instead, Democrats are holding us up on Social Security, while we get everything else we want done."